<exceptional view from elsewhere>
Okay, so I'm back now, not in a town like Alice, but in Alice itself, feeling slightly disoriented. I've had a rapturous reunion with the cats (one of whom wrapped himself round my head and purred like a small motor during the night), spent a day sweeping up the tumbleweeds of cat fur drifting through the house and inspected the remains of the plants. Sigh, whatever I do or say, I seem to end up with about 2 plants dead per week when I'm away. I'm thinking of installing an irrigation system on a timer for when I go away (yes, succumbing to that Centralian sprinkler urge). I've already devised one to use the run-off from the evaporative air-conditioning, but that only works when the evaporative's on, of course. 2005 may well be the year of the gardener!
So, back in Alice, where everyone dresses like a lesbian, regardless of their sex or sexuality, when a recipe says 'extra extra virgin sesame oil', you have to settle for plain old unhealthy sesame oil, and when it says 'vietnamese mint', you buy mint in a plastic bag from Woolies. I'm wondering if I'll keep on finding enough to blog about, or if I'll get to a certain point where I'm just recycling a loop of Alice stories. (People from the East Coast, btw, seemed shocked by my tales of sparties: 'Ooh, just think of all the potential for mingling body fluids and bacteria!') I've kind of prided myself on largely managing to avoid blogging about predictably disastrous family Xmas type celebrations. I have wondered about making New Year's blogging resolutions. Like:
1. I will not blog about family.
2. I will not blog about work.
3. I will not blog while at work.
4. I will edit long posts into smaller chunks.
5. I will clean up my website, and try and understand the subtleties of Typepad better.
6. I will become a more altruistic (i.e. read more of other people's blogs) and less narcissistic blogger (i.e. spend less time on my own blog).
7. I will try and understand remotely what musical bloggers might be talking about.
8. I will use my time more profitably (i.e. give up blogging altogether).
God, well that was all pretty dull and Girl-Guide-ish, wasn't it! Time to move on from resolution-making...
I'm still coming to terms with the tsunami. That sounds pretty indulgent, doesn't it? I haven't been on an intravenous news-drip, as is my wont, for the past three weeks, so I've found it hard to take in the whole tidal-wave-with-name-that-sounds-like-something-from Sushi-Train business. Every time I turn on the teev or receive a newsalert, there's always some mention of mass graves or the stench of bodies burning, or delays in forensic identification, and I switch right off: 'Hey, I'm on holidays! I can't deal with atrocities right now.' I hope this behaviour isn't as bad as the people who wanted to keep on holiday-making in Phuket. I reckon I've donated a total of about $6.20 to various tsunami funds, largely from flicking my spare change into collection tins after making various purchases in Melbourne. People smiled at me and 'thanks' very warmly when I did this, though if they knew how much in comparison I'd spent on my credit card shopping in Sydney and Melbourne (i.e. 'buying supplies'), they'd probably be less enthusiastic, as would Peter Costello. Still, I guess there's always time for me to make a serious credit card donation to one of my favourite charities, such as Oxfam. Or perhaps I could adopt an orphan ...I probably have room for one here (that was said with the person in mind who's started dropping not so subtle hints to me about sperm donors).
Lastly, I've put up some albums (beneath the thumbnails in the left-hand column) from my travels to the East Coast. Take a look -- you never know, you might see yourself there...
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